News Briefs 02/20

| 2/19/17 9:44pm

Author/professor to speak on myths about translating Chinese

Fulbright Scholar and professor at the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies—Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Chu Dongwei will be speaking in Grand Valley State University’s Kirkhof Center on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 1p.m. on the difficulties and purposes of translating Chinese texts into English from modern day and ancient Chinese.

Dongwei has spent much of his life dedicated to the translation of Chinese texts and is the founder and editor-in-chief of a print and online journal of Chinese translated works called “Chinese Literature and Culture.” He has also published several book within in the past 15 years and is an international member of the American Literary Translators Association. The event is LIB 100 approved.

Passport fair to allow students to get or renew passports

Grand Valley State University will host a passport fair for any interested party who needs to get their passport or renew their existing passport Tuesday, Feb. 21, from 1p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Grand River Room in the Kirkhof Center.

The following list of items will be needed by those who are attending: A birth certificate, previous passport or naturalization certificate as proof of US Citizenship, a photo ID (Michigan I.D. driver’s license etc., no social security cards) as proof of identity, two separate checks or money orders totaling $135 (one to be made out to the Department of State for $110 and one to be made out to UPS for $25 if getting a passport for the first time or $6.45 if renewing) and a photo for the passport. If one does not have a photo, there will be an opportunity to get their photo taken at the fair for $3.

Students will also be opportunities to get their photo taken in the Padnos International Center during office hours. After filing and sending all documentation for one’s passport, please allow six weeks for processing.

Three minute thesis competition to highlight graduate student work

The second annual 3-Minute Thesis Competition is set to be held Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 3 p.m. in Grand Valley State University’s Loosmore Auditorium on the downtown Pew Campus. The event features graduate students from all fields of study presenting their thesis and research in three minutes and using the aid of only one slide.

The winner of the competition will receive a $500 cash prize as well as funding to represent GVSU at the Midwest Association of Graduate School’s own 3-Minute Thesis competition in April 2017. Those in second and third will receive $250 and $100 respectively. The audience will also get the opportunity to vote for the presentation they thought was the best.

Xue Yiwei’s stories shift from battles to one’s struggles

By Zhu Yuan(China Daily)Updated: 2016-04-13 07:32:13

Xue Yiwei. [Photo provided to China Daily]

What does war mean to an individual? A very pertinent question in the context of fiction writer Xue Yiwei’s five war stories, which were published in English by Chinese Literature and Culture, an English-language literary magazine jointly published in the United States by IntLingo Inc, Westbury, New York and Zilin Ltd, Guangzhou.

Along with the five stories are commentaries, mostly by foreign literary critics, who try to delve into the stories for their literary value by deconstructing them.

The five stories are about the fate of individuals. In a preface to the collection, Xue writes: “The tension between history and the individual is one of the main areas I endeavor to explore in my writing, and war offers a particular means by which to access it.”

In The Veteran, the hero identified only as The First Lieutenant is able to relive only his part in the war. The trauma of war has upset his balance of past, present and future. Experience is no longer an arch through which things gleam but a solid wall blocking anything else from coming through. The past has taken over the individual.

God’s Chosen Photographer reflects absurdity and irony where the hero, who is mad about photography which he has learned from a foreigner, lies with his camera when he cheats the public with his picture of what is supposed to be “real” but is definitely not. His career starts as a war photographer, who is supposed to seek the meaning of life using his camera, but he endeavors to do so in vain.

In Winning the First Battle, the eldest son of a wealthy landowner is being groomed to eventually take his father’s place. However, the son rebels against his father and leaves home to join the revolutionary Red Army.

As he gets involved more deeply in the struggle, he rises to become a general. But with the revolution over, he now looks for deeper meaning in life and decides that he must reconcile with his father. Adhering to the centuries-old tradition of filial piety, he also wants to take care of his aged father.

Xue Yiwei. [Photo provided to China Daily]

On the way home, he tells his driver, the narrator of the story, of his tussles with his father. Through his stories of the death of his beloved mother, his father’s bid to keep the family stable and his struggles with his father, we see a man who finally comes to appreciate what his father wanted to do to secure a family life for him.

The son appreciates the fact that his father married three women after his first wife’s death in order to provide care and stability for the three children his first wife had given him.

We see in the general a prodigal son－one who is not ashamed of what his father did to preserve the family, but one who is eager to put the two parts of his life together.

It would be easy for readers to look down on the father as the one who tries to keep his son under control, but Xue does not present us with a father that we need to vilify.

The father represents everything that the revolution sought to abolish－aristocracy, wealth, bigamy－a privileged life that depended on the maintenance of an old society.

But the son does not hold this against his father as a revolutionary general might. Instead, the son, looking back on his life as a young man, understands that his father was trying only to create stability for his son, not to control him for any selfish purpose. The father wished for the son to have a stable life－the kind of life that he had.

In his review, Craig Hulst says that the hero of the story won the first battle with his father, but this victory cost him everything he later finds that he appreciates so much. He is supposed to find the meaning of life by leaving his stable home. But what meaning did he find from winning his first battle?

The five stories are about the way heroes search for the meaning of life from wars they get involved in, but none of them succeed. What happens in the war or what the war finally results in is not what they supposed it would bring about. The fact that they fail to come to terms with this reality should provide readers with some food for thought.

There are numerous literary journals in the English-speaking world, but those that specialize in the translation of Chinese literature－and contemporary Chinese literature in particular-are rare.

Those few journals are dominated by Western scholars or businesspeople with their special tastes and a desire to cater to their readers often by rewriting Chinese works. It is a common practice instead of honoring them as pieces of serious literature that should not be altered at will.

But things are beginning to change with the appearance of a Chinese professor with a new journal, Chinese Literature and Culture, based in China and published in the United States, with the backing of Chinese writers and literary journals as well as translators and scholars worldwide.

Since the journal was launched last year, it has published the works of a number of active Chinese authors, including West Window by Su Tong, The Story of Hu Wenqing by Wei Wei and A Dinner for Three by Sun Pin.

Chu Dongwei, founder and editor-in-chief of the print and online journal, is an associate professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. A translator himself, he is also editor of a collection of Zen Buddhist texts under the title The Wisdom of Huineng, Chinese Buddhist Philosopher: The Platform Sutra and Other Translations.

Chinese Literature and Culture, published three times a year, is devoted to translations of Chinese texts (works from the past or by contemporary authors), essays of cultural criticism and original writings－fiction or nonfiction－dealing with the China experience or life in Chinese communities around the world.

Chu says the intended reader is the educated public, and the idea is to promote cultural exchange and the positive influence of Chinese culture. In this process, individual authors and translators will have a chance to reach a wider audience, he says.

The journal has been welcomed by Chinese writers, translators and scholars.

Xue Yiwei, an expatriate Chinese author in Canada whose war stories will be featured in a future issue, has brought the inaugural issue to the attention of a few Western Sinologists and scholars, and says it has received very positive reviews.

Lin Peiyuan, a promising young author, who will have two stories published in the journal, says he is grateful that Chinese Literature and Culture is bringing his works to English readers for the first time.

Timothy Huson, an American philosopher and expert in literature; Fraser Sutherland, a Canadian poet and author; and Craig Hulst, an affiliate professor of writing at Grand Valley State University in the United States are said to have volunteered to help edit the journal.

After Hulst saw a copy of the journal, he wrote to the editor: “It looks really interesting, and I see a need for a journal of this sort, not only to give opportunities for English audiences to read Chinese literature and to get to know Chinese culture but also to give Chinese scholars a venue where they can be recognized by an international audience.”

The journal is published by IntLingo Inc, a global language company headquartered in New York, in collaboration with Zilin Ltd, a provider of international publishing services based in Guangdong’s provincial capital Guangzhou.

]]>Download any two volumes of CLC FREEhttp://www.clcjournal.com/wordpress/download-any-two-volumes-of-clc-free/
Thu, 25 May 2017 03:54:03 +0000http://www.clcjournal.com/wordpress/?p=15Continue reading "Download any two volumes of CLC FREE"]]>Volume 9 of Chinese Literature and Culture features a story “A Bitter Debate in a Dream (English and Chinese)” by Zhang Wei, one of China’s best fiction writers.
Download any two issues of Chinese Literature and Culture free with the following download coupon. First redeem the coupon code on Magzter. Then search for CHINESE LITERATURE AND CULTURE in Apple AppStore or Google Play Store.
Chinese Literature and Culture
2 Single Issues